Hanging Around

I was feeling pretty salty when I headed to the airport for a recent trip.

Before leaving for the one-hour drive, I was notified that my flight was delayed.

Shouldn't have been a huge deal.

It happens all the time.

Unfortunately, we only had a forty-minute layover between flights, which meant we would, you guessed it,

miss our connecting flight.

I called United but could only reach the automated system.

Salt sprinkled.

After selecting enough numbers in the automated system to call Jenny (867-5309, Eighties people),

I was booked on another flight in seats that were, well...

Undesirable.

Sprinkle, sprinkle.

We decided to just leave for the airport at the originally planned time because,

Well, why not?

We were up and ready.

I figured we'd just hang around the airport lounge.

Relax.

Seek my peace.

And worry about working out the details of refunds when I returned home.

We parked with plenty of time to spare.

The parking garage was already bustling with travelers at 8 AM.

As we were making our way into the terminal, I looked to my left.

And the sight stopped me in my tracks.

A man was hanging from the side of the building, pressure washing it.

I stopped and watched for a minute.

My mission-driven husband is used to me stopping when I see something beautiful, unusual, scary, ugly, or delicious.

"Come on," he directs.

"Look at that guy," I answer.

"I see him," he responds, continuing to walk.

"Well, you don't act like you've seen such a thing," I mumble as I take a few more seconds to appreciate the sight before me.

Apparently, I was the only one invested in this image because everyone else seemed to be following the hubs into the terminal.

I pulled out my phone and took a picture.

I take pictures whenever I see something beautiful, unusual, scary, ugly, or delicious.

I like to view them later.

Study them.

What's the lesson?

What's the message?

What's the problem?

Will I ever see this again?

The questions, my questions, are endless.

(Yes, I realize this behavior must annoy the tar out of my spouse, but he married me like this!)

We made it to the airport lounge.

I started sipping on some coffee.

And, since I now had plenty of time to waste, I pulled up the picture.

My train of thought on the picture:

1. We just got here at 8, and from the looks of things, he just got started with his day.

2. Is he wearing regular tennis shoes or are those grippy Spider-Man shoes?

3. How much must he trust his coworkers at the top of the building? I mean, is tying those ropes a "pack your own parachute" situation, or are the people on the roof in charge of that?

4. And speaking of ropes, how strong are those things? I zoomed in super close and thought I'd found a fray in one, but then realized it was just a crack in my iPhone screen protector making me worry about Spider-Man for nothing.

5. How many hours will he hang there? It's a huge building! Does this take days? Weeks?

6. How well can he really see the job he's doing? Ever had someone show you something on their phone and you have to push it back because they've put it too close to your face?

7. Why doesn't he have scaffolding like the big-city window cleaners use? His toes are pressed against the wall. It cannot be comfortable.

8. How much does the pressure washer and all that equipment weigh? There's a lot of stuff dangling from Spidey.

I could go on.

Really, I could.

But I won't.

You're welcome.

The hubs was going through work emails and completely unaware of my forensic investigation of an airport pressure washer.

Typical.

Then I stopped studying the man and started studying the wall.

It was enormous.

And it wasn't just one enormous wall.

It was divided into blocks.

Hundreds of them.

The man wasn't cleaning one block at a time.

(My OCD would have fully appreciated that.)

He was traveling in a straight line, following the ropes down the building, cleaning whatever was directly in front of him.

There was so much work ahead of him.

But there was some clean wall behind him.

From where I stood, I could see both.

Could he?

He was so close to the wall that I wondered how much of his own progress he could actually identify.

Maybe sometimes we're simply too close to see how far we've come.

Maybe we're not supposed to see the whole thing anyway.

He had a path.

The ropes determined where he was going.

His job was to work on what was directly in front of him.

Simple enough.

Then I noticed something else.

He was working hard.

Really hard.

But he wasn't holding himself up.

He couldn't.

His hands were busy doing the work.

Something else was bearing his weight.

The ropes held him.

Guided him.

Lowered him.

Moved him.

And above him were coworkers with a vantage point he didn't have, helping him safely get where he needed to go.

He still had to do the work.

But he didn't have to carry himself while he did it.

And there I was, sitting in an airport lounge, mentally trying to carry an entire day that hadn't even happened yet.

The delayed flight.

The missed connection.

The new flight.

The seats.

The reservation.

The refund.

Things that weren't in front of me yet.

Things I couldn't control.

My situation wasn't dire.

It wasn't even particularly difficult.

It was inconvenient.

I was salty over an inconvenience.

Geez, girl.

I began to think that maybe I didn't need to figure out the whole day.

Maybe I just needed to do what was directly in front of me.

One step.

Then another.

And trust.

Not United Airlines.

Trust God.

God doesn't always put the gift in our path.

Sometimes it's beside it.

What prompted me to look left as I trailed close to my hurried husband?

No idea.

But hanging from the side of an airport building was a reminder I didn't know I needed.

Do what's in front of you.

Trust what is holding you.

Let Someone with the whole story worry about character development.

I glanced over at hubs, who wore his work face as he typed.

I didn't take a picture of that image; it's already tattooed onto my brain!

Instead, gratitude enveloped me as I sipped that hot airport lounge coffee.

Turns out, hanging around wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Now, where is that reimbursement request form?